Chapter 33
REED
The pull in my chest guiding me to Esper has gotten impossible to ignore. Pushing aside all previous doubts and concerns. Nothing matters except her.
It’s why I didn’t stop Soren, who’d barely healed from the scuffle with the Outlaws when he faced off with a prospect.
That was my omega he’d hurt.
As a leader I shouldn’t make exceptions. I shouldn’t give anyone, including my mates, special passes—a worthy goal for next time.
This is an MC, not the damn government. When it comes to Esper, her pain is your pain is the only rule that matters.
I brush my hands through her hair. “Ash is gonna help pack your things and bring you right back here, with us.”
Dad had been sure to remind me about townhall starting in just ten minutes before our Pack moved out toward the parking lot. Asher helps Esper into the truck I bought the other day.
As much as I love Esper on the back of my bike, it definitely has its limitations. I guess it’s good to have a four-wheeled backup on standby.
Soren is mopping the dance floor of Cyclops’ blood, and I smirk at the pink-tinged water. Threats against Esper will be dealt with in blood. Meaning the Outlaws better keep their damn hands to themselves.
“Red?” One Eye comes around the bar, waving his hand in the air to get my attention. I stop, nodding toward my fellow member.
We aren’t the closest. He is much closer to Asher since they spend a lot of time together at Coal’s. The man has always been cool, and anyone mated to Jewels must have balls of steel in my book. The omega isn’t a delicate flower by any means, despite her rainbow hair and supernova smile.
“I just wanted to let you know, member to member, that if this is how you are going to run the club one day…” He waves toward Soren, and my face goes cold like stone.
I’m not sorry for my decision. I could never be sorry for choosing Esper.
But hearing about how I should have done this, or could have done this, isn’t exactly a warm and fuzzy pastime.
One Eye watches my Packmate a moment, then turns back to me. “Well, I respect it. Having your own omega puts things into perspective. I know how some of the guys feel about an omega running things, and well… If you were to leave, I’ll follow you. So will Jewels and DJ.”
“DJ is Road Captain. He can’t.”
"Try telling DJ that. He’s been wanting to lay Cyclops out since the man started but knew it wasn’t his place.”
One Eye wasn’t here to berate me or criticize my methods. He liked my methods. So much so that he’d splinter off if I did.
My breathing evens out and my shoulders relax a little as I stare out towards the Bar. This club is more than its leader. More than prospects or wars. It’s home. It’s family. Dad found me, and he decided I wasn’t a discarded child—I was a Wolf. To leave would mean to tell him he was wrong.
Regardless of my position, this is where I belong.
“I wouldn’t leave. Being Prez would be an honor. But having a place where I belong, a place where my Pack lay their heads safely—that’s more important.”
One Eye claps my shoulder. “Don’t I fuckin know it.”
“Let’s head to Hall,” I say, which actually takes place in class.
Maybe that should be my campaign promise: streamlining the goddamn names in this place.
Prez sits behind his desk, the rest of his inner circle scattered through class. I’m always at the first table, sitting on the table next to Neven who sits in the chair like a normal civilized human being.
“Update us on the thief situation.”
“The money is sent to a woman named Claire Homestead. Hunter thinks he’s sending the money to a Mari Lowe, a woman he dated four years ago. He thinks he’s sending child support.”
“Hunter has a baby?” Bear asks, and Neven shakes his head.
“No, the woman is scamming him. Which is why she’s demanding a hell of a lot more money than child support at Hunter’s pay range would require.”
“Oh wow.” Queen collapses back against her chair, brings her hands to her lips in shock. My eyes linger on Queen—Mom, as her eyes glaze over a bit.
Children are a hard topic for the Nightwell Family.
Queen couldn’t have children of her own. No matter how hard she and my dad tried. How much money they spent. No matter that Queen was an omega and supposedly “made to have babies.”
Nothing would give Queen a baby.
After Ace found me alone in that park, he found my birth mom and tried to give me back.
I hardly even remember my birth parents now…
probably repressed memory bullshit. But I do remember that Ace spent all of five minutes in her trashed apartment before changing his mind and forcing my mom to give up her rights. We rode off into the sunset.
My sunset was Queen's damnation.
It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when Queen wanted to put me into the system. Let me be someone else's problem. She’s never said so in front of me, but even back then I could tell.
She was scared of me.
It took us a while to get where we are. Years in fact. She was never mean, nothing like my birth mom. But she was cold. Distant. She didn’t want to accept me because accepting me felt like giving up on having her own kids.
Seeing me was a constant reminder of what she couldn’t have. Watching Ace get close to me was tantamount to betrayal.
She fell into a depression. It was hard on her and Ace for a while. But then, one day, Soren was pushed down on the playground by some of his brothers’ friends, and I shoved them bitches right back.
She’d sit in the park and lick her wounds, watching the children play. Ace built the neighborhood playground just so she’d have somewhere she could find peace of mind for a little while.
Queen watched Soren and I get our asses beat. The kids were double our size and I honestly knew that ass-whooping was coming. But I couldn’t stand—and still can’t stand—fucking bullies.
After, she took us back home, cleaned us up, and made us sandwiches. She cut my crusts off for the first time.
I didn’t notice it then. I didn't realize that was her way of letting go of what life hadn’t given her so she could grasp onto what it had.
Since then, Queen and I hung together a lot more. She’d help me with my homework. She’d take me shopping. We’d watch those crazy reality shows. She’d brush my hair.
Our relationship grew slowly but deeply. We’d gotten so close, I started spending more time with her than Ace.
When I presented—that not-so-horrid-anymore morning waking up in my perfume-covered room—I ran to Queen. She’d stayed up all night, sitting on the bench down the hall, waiting.
Like she knew.
She smelled it.
I rushed into her open arms. She held me while I cried, my tears soaking her shirt.
No one could understand me from that point on like she could.
She’s been my rock since. The best mom anyone could ask for, and why the gods didn’t give her a baby of her own, I’m not sure. Because if anyone would have deserved it, it would have been her.
I think she’s found peace with how her life turned out, but the ache of what wasn’t still throbs from time to time. So kids will always be a sore subject for this family. Out of respect for Queen.
Prez places a hand on her knee, but addresses the room. “We deal with this today. This is an unfortunate situation. But stealing is stealing. Bring Hunter in.”
Hunter is a big guy, like the rest of us here. In his forties with dirty blond hair and tanned skin, he looks as if he could be Ace’s brother. That, and he’s been beside my dad since the beginning. Only those light blue eyes mark him as different.
As Soren’s boss, he was always the guy with a smile on face. The man cracking jokes and fixing anything with a motor. He replaces the batteries in those kid car things so they’d go faster. The guy who loves to have a picnic. Always there for everyone under him.
What I don’t understand is why he couldn’t have come to us.
“Hunter,” Ace acknowledges him, nodding his head in greeting and Hunter does the same. He comes to stand in the middle of the room, sitting at the middle table by himself, an island of his own.
I can’t tell if that’s a good idea, or if we should make him feel like he’s got someone in his corner, ready to hear him out.
“Do you know why we called you in?” Ace asks, and Hunter nods his head. “Do you have anything you want to say?”
“There is no excuse for stealing. I shouldn't have done it,” he says, shrugging one shoulder. He looks down at the table, but moves his gaze to look over everyone in the room. “I’m sorry. I was just in a tough spot and I… I got lost.”
“Hacker looked into the situation. I’m sorry to say that you, Hunter, are not a dad. Mari Lowe is happily married in Kansas with no children.”
“No, she’s in—”
“That’s not Mari. You’ve been actually talking to a scammer,” I say.
The man falls into despair. His eyes go wide as he stares at me. His brows furrow, and I nod to confirm what I'm saying is the truth.
“What about Lilia?” he murmurs, but I can tell the cogs are turning in his brain.
I shake my head. “She’s… not real.”
Watching this man I’ve grown up with be crushed from the inside out is a devastation all its own. His voice, when he speaks, is thick with unshed tears. “I was… I was gonna visit her. Get my baby. I’m a father. I have to see my baby. This summer. It’s why I took the time off…”
“I’m so sorry, Hunt,” Ace says. He’s not Prez at the moment. He’s Hunter’s friend. My gaze tracks to Queen, who holds her chest as she stares off into space.
Eventually, though, business must be attended to. “Despite the situation,” Ace says, putting his Prez hat back on, "stealing from the MC is a high offense. The trust has been broken, and for that you have two options.”
Hunter nods, though he’s barely here with us anymore. My heart aches for him. He was only trying to do right by his baby girl. I can’t say if any of us were in that situation, we wouldn't have done the same thing.
Still, if we don’t hold him to account, it’s unfair to every other member.
“We want every cent back. You will work and the total amount of ten thousand dollars will be donated to the local elementary school. The choice you have to make though, is if you’d like to stay, with a demotion, or leave.”
The room is silent as we all stare at Hunter. He hasn’t moved a muscle. He finally takes a deep breath, almost like life is flowing back into his body. “I…can stay?”
“I understand doing what you had to do for what you thought was your kid,” Ace says. “You were trying to do right by someone you loved. You just went about it wrong.”
Our club isn’t perfect. Our members aren’t perfect. We don't always make the right choice, but we try. Other MCs would have him killed, or on the run for the rest of his life.
We’re giving him a second chance.
That’s a principle I can stand behind. It’s why I could never leave.
Midnight Wolves is my home. Who I am.
Hunter’s back straightens, a fresh determination in his eye. “I promise I’ll pay every cent. I’ll do anything I can.”
“I'm glad to hear it, buddy,” Ace says. “You no longer can work in management. That will be taken over by Soren, should he want it?”
Eyes fall to Soren, who nods.
“Hunter, you are to check in with me once a week, unless you’d rather someone else, if sp—”
“You are fine.”
“Thank you. You will also be working overtime for free until the debt is paid. Your entire check will go to Queen and I. Once the money is paid back, your check will go back to you. Should there be any problems, you will be stripped of your jacket and you will be forced to leave.”
“Yes, sir, thank you.” He turns to the room, standing up from his seat. “Thank you, everyone. I'm so sorry.”
“One question though.” My words kill the relief in the room, tension shimmering. “Why did you feel as if you couldn’t talk to us? To Ace?”
“Alphas aren't supposed to need help,” Hunter says sheepishly. “I let it get to my head. I’m supposed to be a leader. Strong. Smart. Everything all at once and all the time. How could I… be weak?”
I nod in perfect understanding. I’ve only seen the omega side of social pressures and expectations. The pressure to be docile, needy, unable to stand on my own two feet, subject to heats and hormones and all that shit.
But obviously, there are two sides to this coin. I haven’t been fair. To myself or my Pack. I need to fix that.
Fix me.